Wandrian; A fairy who leaves his home to wander in search of his heart; a wanderer.
Origin: Old English for wandering or wander.
In the beginning of time, Erthe lay unpopulated. Not until many seasons had been spent did a race of people come, from the far east, to make their home on Erthe’s mountainous eastern border. They were the faeries, small, slimly built creatures who stood no higher than the short grass that blanketed the mountainside. They raised graceful structures about the base of the mountain and carved rooms from the dark stone, etching their existence into the virgin land. Time passed with its gentle rapidity of motion until the faeries had become as much a part of Erthe as the ground they lived on.
But the years had not passed in emptiness. While the faeries had built their lives into Erthe, other creatures had begun to slip onto the land’s welcoming shores. It was then that the black lizards found their way to the western coastline, lizards with heavy, powerful bodies, seven times the size of the faeries, and possessed of a curious longevity. They settled in the black dunes on the seaward side of the Ankrudst desert, guided by Hatto Duno, their darkly reticent leader.
This is where faerie lore begins its descent into faerie history, where true happenings become only legend and new events became fact. From the beginning of faerie history, the faeries have lived beneath the shadow of their enemy, the black lizard, Hatto Duno, whose heavy power has lain over them in an unceasing monotony, like the clouds that cover the sun before a rainstorm and hang in the air, breathless. He has grappled with the faeries since the day he discovered them, bitter and relentless, beating and breaking the race of people whose souls are so unbending.
His first great battle against them was waged when their greatest of kings, Aldwin the Great, was ruling over them. It was Aldwin who wielded his sword with the fury and impenetrable force that pushed Hatto Duno back to his hills. It was he who united the faeries in the hope of victory and showed them the determination that has never left them. But history has not continued itself, and not since the time of Aldwin the Great has there been a king to rule over the faeries of Erthe, a king to bear the ruler’s crown and wield the sword of victory.
Aldwin’s queen bore him two daughters, who, in their turn, bore daughters. The faerie rulers are crowned according to their birth, and not their gender, and the descendants of Aldwin have not yet had a firstborn son live to take the Kingship. The faeries have had only queens, women who have ruled with all the strength they possessed, queens who have sent their men to battle against the lizards, and queens who have gone themselves, hoping against hope to defeat forever their greatest of enemies.
Now, though his power has waned and raged unendingly, Hatto Duno still wars against the faeries, and the faeries, led by a woman who grows weary beneath the heavy passage of time, strain uselessly against him. On small Esallan Island, within the flowers of Fleure, in the desert, the mountains, the forest, and deep inside the ethereal beauty of Azure, the faerie people await the storm. The night is growing darker. The sun begins to fade as the darkness creeps over it, and the sky rains tears, weeping for the people whose freedom is all but lost.
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In a forest, dark as night, before dawn, a voice was heard in much spite, “Now, begone!”
A high shrill cry of grief was heard, then fluttered down like a little bird,
The tiny form of a lovely faerie, her floating wings, light and airy.
Her amber eyes with thoughtful glows, her lips like a pale pink rose.
Her lovely skin, ever so fair, her face framed by golden hair.
That fell in ringlets, with silver thread, round her shoulders. Then she said,
“He will not let me stay, where now can I go?” And swiftly fleeing, she heaved great sighs of woe.
